Its been a few weeks now since we started this whole homeschool/work at home gig. And let me tell you it has had it moments. There has been laughter, tears, silence, NOISE, bickering, immense imaginative play and undiscovered talents have been unearthed.
I never thought it would be easy. I know my kids would struggle, I would struggle and my husband would struggle the most. We are lucky though, our 2 year old is still attending day care in a very well run centre. If he wasn’t there would be no work getting done.
We have had to juggle 2 different work schedules, a high school schedule, a year 4 Google classroom routine and a totally paper based year 1 study pack with uni on top. Totally doable right? Yeah, but you will lose your sanity about 4 days in.
Like most families we had to adjust our expectations of what we could accomplish. My husband reduced his hours and takes a little leave each week. School hours for the girls has been reduced to a couple hours a day unless Olive has to be online with her class. Thankfully, high school pretty much runs itself. My boss is very understanding and so long as the work gets done she doesn’t mind when or how long it takes me. What is suffering is my university study.
When I signed up for this teaching period I elected to do 3 subjects, about 30 hours worth of study a week is suggested to complete them. That was tight but manageable when everyone was on a normal schedule. Now it’s near impossible. Census day, where you can drop classes with no penalty, has come and gone and I decided not to drop any classes. Why, you insane lady?you may ask.
Dropping classes now means my degree will take a year longer than I want it too. Even dropping one now sets me back about a year. The way I had to enrol in university means that to do any practical classes I have to actually swap degrees. Before I can swap I need to have completed 8 subjects. I need to do 3 this teaching period and 3 the next if I have any chance of swapping in time do a practical this year.
I want to arrange for my first practical in term 4. Each practical takes 4 weeks and only the first one is offered in term 4. All others must be done in the first half of the year.
When you take a prac its more work, so they recommend doing one less class at the time. It also means that I have to take either my holiday leave, of which I get 4 weeks a year, or unpaid leave from work. I do not want to take unpaid leave as thats a big chunk of money we miss out on.
This means that if I can arrange my first prac for term 4 I can use this years leave allotment and stay on track to do my other pracs with paid leave too.
So no class dropping for this insane lady. School holidays have just started and I’m hopeful that with less routine required for the kids they can self manage a bit better and I can get my work and uni done.
I’ve already handed in the first assignment for each class, passed a maths test and 3 literacy tests, and sat my aptitude test. I have 8 weeks left of this teaching period and I have 6 assignments in that time, 3 due in 3 weeks and the next 3 are due 4 weeks after that.
I can do this! My husband is supportive, Humphrey is still is daycare and will be going for as long as its open, and I know this stuff. I remember a lot of it from first time uni and most of it seems like common sense to me. I’m putting it down to raising 4 kids, volunteering at the school and the fact that I’m meant to be a teacher.
I haven’t felt so strongly about something since we decided to have Humphrey. I am meant to be a teacher, it’s that simple. So whatever has to happen to make that a reality is what I will do. Still not easy but still totally worth it.